“To open in a new browser tab (or window) or not?”
That was the question I pondered when I started this blog—six years ago. If you’ve ever clicked on any of my links, be it external or not, you already know which path I chose. However, those who follow this blog diligently might have noticed that I never covered the topic in a dedicated post. Why? Because, as explained once in my post “One year, already?“, there was, and still is 1, an asynchrony between the blog posts being published and reality. In other words, I did my research, back then, and made my choice. I even prepared a very preliminary draft featuring my fictional great-aunt Aunty 2, but never had the opportunity to finalize and publish it.
So, why revisit this topic now? Because implementing external links best practices is the second installment in my so-called “Blog posts housekeeping” journey.
It is the designers and the content author’s responsibility to ensure which links should open in new window if it is necessary for the functionality or to provide a better user experience.Raghavendra Satish Peri
The philosophical question
When I first pondered whether website links should open in a new window or tab, I didn’t differentiate between internal and external links. However, it quickly became clear that there was a consensus: internal links should open in the same window. The real dilemma lay with external links. The concern is that when you link to an external site without setting the link to “open in a new tab,” you risk losing your reader! By clicking on that link, they are literally leaving your site indeed.
One way to sidestep the entire decision would be to avoid using external links altogether. However, I chose not to take that path.
Your willingness to include valuable external links demonstrates that you care about your readers. Instead of wanting to greedily hold onto every second of their attention, you provide them with the resources they really want and need to fully explore the topic, and generously include external options to accomplish this.Kali Bizzul
Do What I Say, Not What I Do
As you may imagine, in keeping with CogitActive’s modus operandi 3, I read many articles on the subject matter—both back then and recently in preparation for this article—before coming up with my decision (which, by the way, has not changed). However, there were so many articles on both sides of the argument that the decision was far from straightforward. To help me in the process, I first thought of looking at what others were doing, especially the big names in the website industry. They know the business better than me, right?
Surprisingly, it wasn’t that easy to find articles with external links on these big companies’ websites. I’m talking about industry giants, not small blogs that are typically loaded with external links—affiliate links, to be precise. These bigger sites want indeed to keep readers engaged on their pages longer, hoping that through these “further reading” suggestions, visitors eventually become customers. It’s all about engagement.
Internal links lead to people spending more time on your site and decreasing your bounce rate. The more time your readers spend reading old blog posts, learning new information, and becoming more familiar with your brand, the better.Kali Bizzul
My observation is that a significant percentage of web professionals favor opening external links in new tabs (or windows). Why? The main reason is simple: they want people to stay on their website. There are likely other reasons too. For instance, I’ve read that opening external links in a new tab is generally considered a good practice
when it comes to SEO. This practice might be ideal from an SEO perspective because visitors remain on your website for longer periods.
Having your external links open in a new tab could possibly help improve engagement metrics like bounce rate and time on site.Kris Gunnars, BSc
Despite a myriad of articles explaining it is bad practice to open external links in a new window (and maybe just as many saying the opposite), many people still favor new tabs. But here’s the catch—they don’t practice what they preach! Let me explain. In my quest for answers, I often stumble upon articles on these big-name websites addressing whether or not you should open external links in a new tab. Believe it or not, most, if not all, advise against this practice, explaining that it is a bad practice to open external links in a new window! And yet, their external links, when they have any, open in a new tab!
“So, should I follow my peers?”
Given the paradox of websites advising against opening links in new tabs, yet doing exactly that, I was no longer sure about following their example.
Opening external links in new window is not a good usability and accessibility practice, but I often come across SEO and marketing professionals believing that opening links in new tab will help with bounce rate and user retention on the website.Raghavendra Satish Peri
Evaluation of sources
As alluded to above, I found both types of articles: those explaining it is bad practice to open external links in a new window and those stating that Generally, internal links should open in the same tab, while external links should open in new tabs.
So, which one should I believe?
No source should be overlooked; however, they vary in reliability, credibility, and relevance. The recency of information is crucial in determining its reliability. What was state-of-the-art yesterday may be obsolete today. In particular, older articles might not account for recent changes in web standards or user behavior patterns.
Since 1999, it’s been a firm web-usability guideline to refrain from opening new browser windows for several reasons. All of these also apply to opening new browser tabs and are still valid today.Jakob Nielsen and Anna Kaley
Here are the 5 reasons (from the above article) for not allowing links to open in new browser windows or tabs:
• More windows or tabs increase the clutter of the user’s information space and require more effort to manage.
• New windows or tabs can cause disorientation, with users often not realizing that a new window or tab has opened. This problem is exacerbated on mobile, where the old window is never visible.
• Less-technical users struggle to manage multiple windows and tabs, especially on mobile. (On tablets, where users can have both multiple windows and tabs for the browser, it’s even more confusing.)
• New windows or tabs prevent the use of the Back button for returning to the previous page and force the user to spend effort to find their way back to the previous content.
• New windows or tabs are not inclusive for blind or low-vision users — especially when they open outside of the area that’s magnified.
Some people argue that users do not prefer to open links in a new browsing context. They think that doing so is similar to popup ads and other annoying behavior. With the rise of tabbed browsing, this argument has largely gone away. Most users prefer to open links in a new tab, because it allows them to come queue referenced links for later reading without losing their current browsing context.Adam Wood
“What about credibility?”
Unfortunately, the credibility of a source often hinges on the author’s expertise and transparency about his/her qualifications. Anyone can publish anything on the web; online content is not peer-reviewed and may be inaccurate.
Your external links should open in a different tab, and there are various reasons why this is important. However, the most significant reason to have links open in a new tab is that this gives the visitor as much control as possible with their experience on your site.Dharmesh Shah
Biases, hidden agendas, distorted perspectives, and commercial promotions are issues to deal with in any source, but this concern is particularly pertinent to information found on the web. It’s important to remain critical. Here are examples of far-fetched arguments:
Opening external links in the same tab can create back button fatigue for users. When the user goes to the external website and clicks around, they may need to click the back button multiple times in order to get back to your website. This can be detrimental to the user experience.Nick Antonopoulos
One person’s “ethical” choice to open a link in the same web browser can confuse the site visitor if they try to get back to the original web page by closing the browser tab they are currently in.Roger Montti
Opening new tabs of the same website is redundant and confusing. If it’s the same website but a different page, users will use the navigation menu to navigate back or elsewhere if they need. Keeping users in the same tab helps them better understand the navigation flow of your site. External links, however, should open in new tabs.Anthony Tseng
If a reader is in the middle of your blog post, they probably don’t want to leave your page every time they click a link.Tracy Koenn
Having external links that open in a new window or tab is not only good for user experience and your website’s SEO, but it also ensures that users don’t lose the page they were on, aka the page of your website.Jelisaveta Sapardic
A good user experience (UX) ensures all internal links open in the same browsing tab and all external links in a new tab. This is also intuitive in terms of UX because users wouldn’t expect to suddenly leave your site if they read an article and click on an outbound link.Danial Zahid
The list goes on and on, but my ‘favorite’ argument is that this practice allows Clearly differentiating between the original content and external resources.
To sum up, not all sources are worth trusting.
“So, how to figure out what is the best approach?”
One approach would be to ask ‘real’ people what they think or do. Unfortunately, not everybody is as methodical as me when it comes to making the most informed decision possible. There are also way too many so-called ‘experts’ whose opinions should be taken with a grain of salt (see above). To illustrate my point, I will use a Quora question: When building a website, do you prefer to have your links open in the same tab or in a new tab?
Not surprisingly, the majority of answers recommend, It’s often a good practice to open external links in a new tab to keep users on your site,
and some even go as far as to claim, Definitely in a new tab, even for internal links.
Really? Of note, more technology-oriented resources, such as Stack Overflow or Stack Exchange, yield similar results: Having external links opened in a new tab is better,
or Almost always it is a good practice to open an external link in a new tab.
My Great-Aunt Aunty’s Tale
Six years ago, when I embarked on my quest to determine whether external links should open in a new tab or not, I found myself lost amidst a sea of contradictory opinions (see above). At that time, I wasn’t as well-equipped or knowledgeable as I am today. The more articles I read, the more confused I became. Each source seemed to present a compelling argument, yet none offered a definitive solution. It was during this period of uncertainty that my great-aunt Aunty came to the rescue—an unconventional perspective that helped shape my decision.
When I say that “none offered a definitive solution,” it isn’t entirely accurate. One article—How to Make Links Open in a New Window or Tab
by Christopher Heng of thesitewizard.com—helped tilt the balance (see an excerpt below).
I know that some new webmasters seem to have got the impression that causing external links to open in a new window helps to keep people from leaving your website. This is an erroneous assumption. If someone clicks on a link and wants to return to your site, they will simply hit the Back button on their browser. Most people, even non-computer-geeks, learn this feature of their browser within a short time of discovering the Internet. The power users learn, in addition, how to right click a link and select “Open in a new tab” (or window) when they need a link to be displayed in a separate tab or window.
When you create links that open in a new window, you are actually preventing newcomers from returning to your website. You may think that they will know how to simply switch back to the original window. My experience with such people suggests otherwise; they are stymied by the Back button not working, and are not even aware that they are looking at a new tab or window. When they can’t figure out how to solve the problem, they will give up and move on to other things.
As you saw it coming, this is when my great-aunt entered my preliminary draft. I am clearly the kind of person who uses abuses the right-click option (and selects “open in a new tab”) when I read an article, so as not to interrupt my reading flow and to check these links afterward. I don’t even bother to know if they would open in a new tab or not on their own. But what about the non-computer geeks? What about my great-aunt Aunty?
That’s why I decided back then 5 not to force external links (or any links for that matter) to open in a new tab or window!
Best Practices: The Real Deal
Unlike the myriad of sources discussed earlier, for this section, I relied solely on credible and authoritative sources to determine the best practices for handling external links. By focusing on well-researched, peer-reviewed, and widely respected guidelines, I can indeed ensure that the recommendations presented are both reliable and effective.
“So, what the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)—the main international standards organization for the World Wide Web—has to say about this?”
In general, it is better not to open new windows and tabs since they can be disorienting for people, especially people who have difficulty perceiving visual content. However there are some situations where it is preferable from an accessibility perspective to open a new window or tab. Here are two such situations:
1. Opening a page containing context-sensitive information, such as help instructions, or an alternate means of completing a form, such as a calendar-based date picker, will significantly disrupt a multi-step workflow, such as filling in and submitting a form, if the page is opened in the same window or tab.
2. The user is logged into a secured area of a site, and following a link to a page outside of the secured area would terminate the user’s logon. In this case opening external links in an external window allows the user to access such references while keeping their login active in the original window.
It is recommended that when links are opened to a new window, there is advance warning.
In general, it is better not to open new windows and tabs.
One Failure of Success, according to the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), is when A user clicks on a link, and a new window appears. The original link has no associated text saying that it will open a new window.
There are two important points here. The first is related to the previous point, “opening windows that are not requested by the user” is wrong! The second is that if you decide to do so, you should inform the user; i.e., provide the “advance warning” mentioned in the above article.
Opening new windows automatically when a link is activated can be disorienting for people who have difficulty perceiving visual content, and for some people with cognitive disabilities, if they are not warned in advance. Providing a warning allows the user to decide it they want to leave the current window, and the warning will help them find their way back, if they do decide they would like to go to the new window. It will help them understand that the “back” button will not work and that they have to return to the last window they had open, in order to find their previous location.W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
The opposite, i.e., the Success Criterion, is that Changes of context are initiated only by user request or a mechanism is available to turn off such changes.
This brings me to the following argument:
By forcing a link to open in a new browser tab we’re overriding default browser behaviour; what makes your website so special that you can change decades-established learned user behaviour?Martin Underhill
From a technical point of view, to open the link in a new tab or window, you have to change the default behavior. This involves specifying or modifying the target attribute of the HTML <a> tag. By default, this attribute is set to “_self” causing the link to open in the same tab. If you don’t specify anything, links open within the same tab or window. To alter this behavior (i.e., to change the default or the standard developed by the W3C), you need to add target="_blank" to your HTML <a> tag.
This is what the target attribute looks like in action:
<a href="https://example.com/" target="_blank">Exernal Link</a>To summarize, it’s all about making content more accessible. Having links on a website open in a new tab is not considered best practice in terms of usability and accessibility because it violates web accessibility standards. It prevents people using assistive software like screen readers and people who can only use a keyboard, not a mouse, from effectively navigating a website.
Don’t break the back button!W3C QA Tips
To be continued…
1 In that post, I naively concluded my aside (i.e., the text box entitled “Asynchronously”) with “Eventually, the posts will catch up with real life, though.” However, the events that transpired during the fateful summer of 2020 decided otherwise… ^
2 She made her appearance in my third post, What is a podcast?, and was one of the two interlocutors I had conversations with at the beginning of this blog; the other being my geeky little bird. ^
3 My modus operandi involves thoroughly studying every aspect of a problem—gathering and reading all available information on the subject matter—before making the most informed decision possible. ^
4 As Roger Montti from Search Engine Journal highlights, Some people assert that it’s unethical to ‘trap’ a user on your site by opening links on a new browser window and keeping your own web page open, as well. The problem with that point of view is that quite likely most people don’t know that they have a choice to open a new browser window.
^
5 What about now? There’s a Reddit discussion on this issue, and here’s what ecommerce-optimizer had to say: Bingo, I agree 100%. While the article from 1999 seems nice, that was multiple years before browsers had tabs. Opera was the first browser I switched to because of tabs and that was 2004. It’s 2022 now, the world is a different place. My 80 something yr old mom doesn’t like new tabs, the rest of the world is used to them.
In other words, we should consider not just his mom and my aunt, but the rest of the people as well. ^